nep-lam New Economics Papers
on Central and South America
Issue of 2020‒02‒03
three papers chosen by



  1. Criminal Dominance and Campaign Concentration By Bullock, J.
  2. Perceptions of Police Corruption in Medellín By Arias, Eric; Hanson, Rebecca; Kronick, Dorothy; Slough, Tara
  3. Welfare State Development, Individual Deprivations and Income Inequality: A cross-country analysis in Latin America and the Caribbean By Cruz-Martinez, Gibran

  1. By: Bullock, J.
    Abstract: There are many journalistic and anecdotal accounts about the prevalence of electoral corrals in Brazil, geographic areas where brokers, politicians, or community leaders influence residents to vote for a specific candidate. In this paper, I investigate one particular type of suspected electoral corral: the favela, urban slum. This analysis focuses on the 1000+ favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I explore whether or not vote share is indeed more concentrated in urban slums, and then whether or not vote concentration is related to criminal dominance. I contend that politicians in Rio de Janeiro have incentives to work with criminal groups in order to get more votes, and that finding a way to access these electoral corrals may be an election-winning strategy. Using novel, geospatial data and introducing a new text dataset on criminal dominance in Rio de Janeiro, I show that vote concentration is indeed more concentrated in urban slums and, within these slums, even more concentrated in slums that have steady criminal dominance from one election to the next.
    Keywords: Ciencia conductual, Democracia, Desarrollo, Investigación socioeconómica, Pobreza, Violencia, Corrupción,
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1390&r=all
  2. By: Arias, Eric; Hanson, Rebecca; Kronick, Dorothy; Slough, Tara
    Abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that police corruption is a scourge across Latin America, undermining citizens’ trust in and collaboration with police officers. We find that this does not describe police-community relations in Medellín. Using original survey data in Medellín, we find perceptions of police corruption are only weakly correlated with perceptions of police quality along other dimensions. This finding echoes evidence from qualitative field notes from more than 400 police-community meetings, where citizens seldom voiced concerns about police corruption, but often voiced concerns about other aspects of police performance.
    Keywords: Evaluación de impacto, Justicia, Políticas públicas, Seguridad, Seguridad ciudadana,
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1514&r=all
  3. By: Cruz-Martinez, Gibran (CSIC)
    Abstract: Several scholars have confirmed the role that the welfare state (WS) plays in reducing poverty, promoting equality and ensuring the common wellbeing. One of the limitations of the scholarship has been the conceptualization and operationalization of the WS and poverty as one-dimensional variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between welfare state development, single-dimensions deprivations and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. The WS is operationalized as a one-dimensional variable, but also taking into account its multidimensional nature. Three individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty and two income inequality indicators are used as dependent variables. Three pooled time-series cross-section regression analyses with panel-corrected standard errors models were carried out on 18 countries in the region around 2000, 2005 and 2010. This paper shows that the development of social-welfare programs and institutions seems to be an effective way of tackling individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty in the region. On the other hand, the WS development didn’t appear to be effective to reduce income inequality. The outcomes of welfare institutions appear to be the pivotal dimension to reduce income inequality and income deprivations in the region.
    Date: 2017–12–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:yw8kg&r=all

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